Kukla's Korner Hockey

(Imke) Reimers and her colleagues collected data from every NHL game from Jan. 1, 1996, to Dec. 11, 2015. They were interested in particulars such as a referee’s total number of games, penalties called, a referee’s years of experience, and number of games a referee worked with a specific team.

Experience varies from old-timers like O’Halloran to Garrett Rank, who first pulled on NHL stripes on Jan. 15, 2015. The veteran crew of Dave Jackson and Marc Joannette, for example, called the Montreal-Detroit game on Oct. 17, 2015. Combined, the duo had worked 205 Canadiens games and 134 Red Wings games over their careers. Conversely, Eric Furlatt was the lone referee for the Montreal-Detroit game on Feb. 11, 2002. Furlatt had only worked five Canadiens games and one Wings game before then.

Some of the results of their research:

■ A first-year referee calls an average of 24 penalty minutes per game. A second-year referee averages 18 PIMs per game. Expected penalty minutes decline by 0.262 for each additional season of experience. A two-referee team with 10 total seasons calls 2.6 fewer penalty minutes per game than a duo with no experience.

■ Each additional season of a referee’s experience with a specific team decreases penalty minutes per game by 0.972.

■ Of all the months, referees call the most penalties in October.

“What we were really interested in is if you have a regulatory agency — in banking, finance, stocks, anything, really — we are concerned with fairness,” Reimers said.

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